Freedom From the Wall

“In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in
are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.” This is a quote
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a writer who was born during the height of the
feminist movement; during a time where women writers were exploding in
popularity. Many men thought of female writers as, “being brainy, selfish,
unladylike, and unattractive” (“1862: The Explosion of Women Writers” by
Christopher Hager). These women were criticized for simply being female, and
their works were seen as inadequate (Hager, par. 3). Many female literary
artists fought this view, Gilman included. In fact, as the quote suggests, she herself
was a feminist. In 1891, she published a work in the New England Magazine. Her
biggest reason for publishing the story was because she wanted to expose how being
told to never work again is not a proper treatment for any illness, though she
was prescribed exactly that by a physician and nearly went insane because of it.
This is where her inspiration for “The Yellow Wallpaper” came from (The Norton
Anthology: American Literature). The purpose of this essay is to go through “The
Yellow Wallpaper” and discuss the conflict in the story, and the consequences
of that conflict for the characters involved.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is about an unnamed woman, and it
seems to be in her point of view through journals. She mentions a few times
that she’s writing in secret and doesn’t want her husband to know. The narrator
also mentions how she is ill, and her husband, John, a physician, suggested
that she do no work until she is well again. This is important to the story,
because during this time, many physicians believed that women would get sick if
they were reading or writing. This is evident in Gilman’s own experiences, as
she wrote this story to be semiautobiographical.

When
talking about why she wrote The Yellow
Wallpaper, she said, “For many years, I suffered from a severe and
continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia… I went… to a noted
specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man
put me to bed and applied the rest cure… and sent me home with solemn advice to
‘live as domestic a life as far as possible,’ to, ‘have but two hours’
intellectual life a day,’ and ‘never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again as
long as I lived’ (Gilman, 523-524). Gilman followed these instructions for
three months before, as she put it, she came to, “the border line of utter
mental ruin that I could see over” (Gilman, 524). She immediately started
working once again and wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” One can see how Gilman
meant for this to reflect on what she went through, as John gives the narrator
of the story the same treatment.

However,
despite her husband’s instructions, the narrator continues to write in secret.
Her husband is gone most of the time though, because he is a physician, so she
is able to get away with it. The conflict seems to start early here. Already,
her husband is telling her the way to get better is to do absolutely nothing,
and to stop writing because he believes it’s making her sick. The narrator
mentions that she does feel more exhausted from writing, but only because she must
hide it. She often talks about the room she is living in and goes into detail
about the wallpaper. At one point, she talks about two “bulbous eyes [staring]
at you upside down.” She talks about how it seems to crawl up, down, sideways. As
the story continues, she mentions that she sees the shape of the woman. Yet, as
her mental state is obviously deteriorating, John seems to continually brush
her off when she attempts to talk to him about how she doesn’t feel like she’s
getting any better. He constantly treats her like a child, carrying her
upstairs and reading to her, scolding her when she doesn’t do what he wants her
to do, or calling her things like, “little girl,” hinting towards the
possibility of thinking less of his wife.

Further,
during the 19th century, mental illness was a relatively new medical
field, therefore not many people knew much about it. John was a physician, but
most likely knew nothing about mental illness and was not able to see the signs
that his wife displayed. It could also be assumed that, had John been more
present during this time, maybe he would have seen some signs of it; yet it is
stated multiple times that he is gone for long hours because of work.

Throughout
the story, she seems to have worse hallucinations as time goes on. For example,
at one point, she talks about how the “woman behind [the wallpaper]” as she
calls her, escapes during the day and “creeps” (or crawls) outside of her
windows. She says, “It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping,
and most women do not creep by daylight… and when a carriage comes she hides
under the blackberry vines. I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very
humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!” (Gilman, 520) This seems to add
to the consequences of the conflict, as the conflict so far seems to be that
her husband seems to think little of her, perhaps because she is a woman. This
is evidenced by his hesitancy to believe she is sick, or at the very least,
that she is as sick as she thinks. Not only that, but it is evidenced from his treating
her like a child, as pointed out above.

Unfortunately,
the story ends with the narrator seemingly going into complete madness. This is
evidenced by her stating that she sees multiple women creeping outside her
window, and she doesn’t like to look at them. She also seems to believe she is
the woman behind the wallpaper as she says things such as, “I wonder if they
all come out of that wallpaper as I did,” “I suppose I shall have to get back
behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!” and to John she
says, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most
of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman, 523) The story even ends with
her creeping back and forth in the room, even over her unconscious husband who
passed out upon seeing her in her current state. This part is extremely
important, because one could see this as coming from her feeling trapped in the
house. Perhaps she was the woman behind the wallpaper the entire time. Her
descent into madness could have been fought or treated, but one could say it’s
safe to assume that, being a woman, many people in the story assumed she was
exaggerating or making a problem when there was none.

Unfortunately,
this was not uncommon. As stated earlier, mental illness was a new medical
field. Therefore, many physicians depended upon social norms such as heredity,
environment, gender, class, or sinful behavior to determine whether someone had
a mental illness (“The Language of Madness: Understanding Terminology”). The
ultimate consequence of the conflict in this story is the narrator’s mental
illness getting worse and worse until she had a nervous breakdown. As mentioned
earlier, Gilman herself even stated that she nearly descended into madness
because of a similar wellness plan by her own physician; that was the whole
purpose of writing the story.

Thankfully,
there was a resolution to this conflict, though not in the story. Gilman said
in the end that, “Many years later, I was told that the great specialist had
admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia
since reading ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” (Gilman, 524) Gilman’s story had affected
many different people besides just the original physician that attempted to
treat her. She says that it’s, “valued by alienists,” and that, “it saved one
woman from a similar fate—so terrifying her family that they let her out into
normal activity and she recovered.” (Gilman, 524)

In
conclusion, the point of this essay was to discuss the conflict present in “The
Yellow Wallpaper,” as well as the consequences of said conflict. There seems to
be a few different points of conflict; the view of women in that society
through John’s view of his wife, and the view of mental illness during this
time through the narrator’s treatment plan as well as how she is treated by those
around her. The ultimate consequence was the worsening of her mental illness.
The quote used at the beginning of this essay is very fitting for this
discussion. As mentioned earlier, many believed that when women worked or did
any reading or writing, they would get sick. However, through Gilman’s own
experiences and the experience of the narrator in her short story, she was able
to prove that the opposite is true; in fact, she got more sick when she stopped
working altogether. During this time, it was uncommon for women to read and
write, and was against social norms. She proved her own quote to be correct.
She did not fit in during her time, yet she was definitely demonstrating a
healthy and positive response by fighting the stereotypes present during that
time.

A
lot of good seems to have come from this story, and hopefully there were many
women who were saved by Gilman’s short story besides the one mentioned earlier.
Thankfully, women’s rights have come a long way since then, as well as the
study of mental illness. Despite this, it’s good to look at works such as these
so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated.